When it comes to expressing love, retired police officer gets it write

Some of the Ortiz clan gather around Jacqueline Ortiz's kitchen table as they sort through letters written by her father, Andres.

Photo By Andrew Ortiz/Courtesy

Andres Ortiz, 67, retired from the San Antonio Police Department in 2004. It usually takes him 15 minutes to write a letter to his 11 children.

Photo By Jerry Lara/San Antonio Express-News

Letters are piled on a table at the home of Jacqueline Ortiz and Ryan Wilson, Sunday, June 17, 2012. Ortiz’ father, Andrew Ortiz, wrote and send each of his 11 children, a letter a week when they started to go off to college. The letters contained pieces of advice and inspiration for his children, which include seven boys and four girls. He also wrote about politics. The elder Ortiz wasn’t able to attend the gathering due to an illness.

Photo By Jerry Lara/San Antonio Express-News

Cousins Carolina Ortiz, 10, left, and Mia Wilson, 7, reads letters sent by their grandfather, Andres Ortiz, Sunday, June 17, 2012. The elder Ortiz, 68, wrote and sent a letter a week to each of his 11 children when they went off to college. The letters contained pieces of advice and inspiration for his children, which include seven boys and four girls. He also wrote about politics.

Photo By Jerry Lara/San Antonio Express-News

Cousins Carolina Ortiz, 10, front center on the left, and Mia Wilson, 7, reads letters sent by their grandfather, Andres Ortiz, Sunday, June 17, 2012. The elder Ortiz, 68, wrote and sent a letter a week to each of his 11 children when they went off to college. The letters contained pieces of advice and inspiration for his children, which include seven boys and four girls. He also wrote about politics. In back are from left, Anna Ortiz, Robert Ortiz, Bobby Ortiz and Jacqueline Ortiz.

Photo By Jerry Lara/San Antonio Express-News

Letters are piled on a table at the home of Jacqueline Ortiz and Ryan Wilson, Sunday, June 17, 2012. Ortiz’ father, Andrew Ortiz, wrote and send each of his 11 children, a letter a week when they started to go off to college. The letters contained pieces of advice and inspiration for his children, which include seven boys and four girls. He also wrote about politics. The elder Ortiz wasn’t able to attend the gathering due to an illness.

Fathers show their love in all sorts of ways.

Taking time for batting practice with a son. Showing a teen daughter how to two-step. Hugs. Support. Just plain old attention.

For Andres Ortiz, showing how much he cherishes his 11 children entails putting pen to paper. Lots and lots of paper.

Starting when his offspring left home for college, Ortiz has written weekly letters to each one in which he pours out his fatherly advice, words of encouragement and latest family news.

While they were in school, he also tucked in $10 for “laundry money” and other collegiate expenses — no small financial feat for a brood this large.

The letters were a way to stay close, he said. To bolster the ties that bind.

“It was a way of communicating with them and keeping the family together,” said Ortiz, 67, a retired San Antonio police officer who still sends the weekly missives, even though his kids are now grown and spread out across the country, most raising families of their own.

Ortiz, a former Green Beret and decorated Vietnam vet — Bronze Star, Purple Heart — is a living embodiment of the positive effect fathers can have when they make time to reach out and spread the love.

He planned a big celebration on Father's Day with wife Emilia and some of their children — including local newscaster Jacqueline Ortiz — but was laid low with a nasty stomach bug. The T-bone steaks he bought would have to wait.

But his kids had no trouble celebrating their father and the rich legacy his letters represent via telephone.

“The letters were so incredibly meaningful to me,” said Jacqueline, 40, who stores hers in a box. “My father was always working, and the fact that he took precious moments out of his day to write to me personally just made my day. It was like a gift I received every week.”

In one of her letters, Ortiz described the right attitude to have at work: “Show up for work early and leave late. Do more at work than what you get paid to do and you will soon be getting paid more. Be loyal to your boss, whether you like him or not, because the way you work is the way you live.”

Through the years, Ortiz has sprinkled his letters with inspirational thoughts he gleans from Scripture, the motivational books he reads, the occasional television show. His beliefs grow out of his faith, he said — the family sat 13 to a pew Sundays at their beloved Catholic church.

Interspersed are his ideas on what it takes to live a good life and maintain a good marriage — wisdom he has gained from living with and loving Emilia (“She's my angel”) for 44 years.

“Marriage takes effort and sacrifice,” Ortiz said a few days before Father's Day. “And parents have to interact with their kids. I write to them, ‘You can tell your child whatever you want, but what your child sees you do is what they're going to do.'”

(His words must have taken root: All 11 kids are married.)

About 15 years ago, Ortiz replaced the cash with family photographs in each envelope. And he started writing three one-page letters that he copies for each child — although he still includes individualized letters occasionally.

No Facebook or Twitter for Ortiz — he's not one for computers, he said. He writes all the letters by hand. Each one takes about 15 minutes.

Daughter Theresa Jerrell, 32, a college recruiter in Chicago, said the value of her father's letters dawned on her as she grew older.

“It's just an awesome record of our lives,” she said. Jerrell has memories of her exhausted dad — who worked part-time security jobs in addition to being a patrolman, to feed the family — sometimes falling asleep in the stands at her athletic events. Still, he showed up, she said.

Bobby Ortiz, 43, a football coach and English teacher at Katy High School, near Houston, said he has kept every letter since 1986.

“My father was kind of old-fashioned, not really touchy-feely,” he said. “The letters were his way of being a little touchy-feely. Every word was sent from his heart.”

He said he has folded his father's lessons into his own child rearing — “You just gotta communicate with your kids” — and how he approaches his job and his students, which is with his whole heart.

Virginia Proctor, 31, recalled that when she was a freshman in college, she struggled mightily with math. Feeling down about it one day, she opened her weekly envelope to find a much-needed message.

“It was all about how life brings challenges, and you have to decide whether you're going to pick yourself up and meet them or let them beat you down,” said Proctor, now a special education teacher in the Northside Independent School District. “I will never forget that letter.”

Andrew Ortiz, a detective in the narcotics unit of the Dallas Police Department, is the only one to follow in his father's law enforcement footsteps. (All 11 children went to college, on a mixture of scholarships, grants and student loans.) He said he and his wife look forward to the letters each Tuesday.

“They put a smile on our faces,” he said. “It's so special to hear your father tell you he loves you and is proud of you.”

Andrew and his wife just had grandbaby number 12. Andres and Emilia — who kept the home while the brood grew up — spend some of their retirement time visiting their children and baby-sitting the next generation.

Ortiz was born in a small town 30 miles south of San Antonio. His parents were migrant workers who didn't finish high school. But they planted the desire for education in their son: Ortiz earned a degree in criminal justice from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1977, attending classes at night and on days off.

He, in turn, planted that seed in his own children, all of whom have vibrant careers today — from chef to meteorologist to newscaster to computer whiz and so on.

Ortiz served on the city's first SWAT team. He retired in 2004 after 33 years on the force.

Jacqueline plans to bind the letters into a book some day to bequeath to her children, ages 7 and 4, when they're older. She wants them to know the remarkable man their grandfather was, his character etched in every line.

“My father is the most positive person I've ever met,” she said. “He has the most giving heart. He's always thinking of other people, not himself. He's the best dad in the world.”